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    Read the Justice Department’s Memo to Attorney General William P. Barr

    Subject: Review of Special Counsel’s Report Page 4

    The Special Counsel’s Report cites over a dozen federal obstruction decisions in the Report, yet in nearly every one, the charged conduct involved (i) inherently wrongful acts to destroy evidence, to create false evidence, or to tamper with witnesses or jurors, and (ii) an effort to prevent the investigation or punishment of a separate, underlying crime. We have identified only two cases that lack one of those elements. The first is Arthur Anderson LLP v. United States, 544 U.S. 696, 707-08 (2005), which concerned the destruction of evidence in advance of an expected SEC investigation. Although there was no evidence in that case of an underlying crime, the exception essentially proves the rule, because the Supreme Court vacated the conviction precisely because the prosecution could have covered innocuous conduct. When it comes to actions otherwise lawful in themselves, the Court emphasized the need to “exercise restraint in assessing the reach of a federal criminal statute,” because of the need to provide “fair warning.” Id. at 696, 703-04. The Court emphasized that such restraint is particularly appropriate where the “act underlying the conviction… is by itself innocuous,” is not “inherently malign” and could be performed for appropriate, non-criminal reasons. Id. In construing the obstruction statute, the Supreme Court observed that “corrupt” and “corruptly” “are normally associated with wrongful, immoral, depraved, or evil” conduct, and the Court vacated the conviction because the jury instruction did not meet that demanding standard. Id. at 705.

    The Report also cites United States v. Cueto, 151 F.3d 620, 631 (7th Cir. 1998), which was a case that clearly involved an effort to protect an underlying crime-namely an illegal gambling operation but that also involved actions that would have been lawful if undertaken for a noncorrupt purpose. The Seventh Circuit there affirmed the conviction of one of the owners of the gambling operation, because he had repeatedly abused state court processes in order to take discovery from grand jury witnesses in an effort to impede the federal investigation. Although the obstruction charge involved otherwise lawful conduct, we cannot describe it as in any way resembling the facts described in the Special Counsel’s Report.²

    In our prior discussions, the Special Counsel has acknowledged that “we have not uncovered reported cases that involve precisely analogous conduct.” See Special Counsel’s Office Memorandum to the 600.4 File, Preliminary Assessment of Obstruction Evidence, at 12 (July 3, 2018). Indeed, in seeking to identify cases in which the misuse of otherwise lawful authority established an obstruction case, the memorandum cited three charging documents, two of which arose from state court and thus did not involve federal criminal violations. See id. All three cases involved an effort to use official authority to prevent the prosecution or punishment of a distinct crime. The one federal case did not involve just the abuse of official authority, but rather witness tampering and manufacturing false evidence, concerns that go to the heart of the obstruction statutes. Accordingly, there simply does not appear to be any clear legal precedent similar to the kinds of conduct evaluated here.

    2

    The Special Counsel also cites United States v. Cintolo, 818 F.2d 980, 992 (1st Cir. 1987), which recognized that “any act by any party-whether lawful or unlawful on its face-may abridge § 1503,” but that case involved both an inherently wrongful act (tampering with a grand jury witness) and separate, underlying crimes (an illegal gambling and loan-sharking operation). More

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    With Trump, Merrick Garland Can’t Afford to Miss

    The two weeks since the F.B.I. descended on Mar-a-Lago have felt remarkably familiar. It’s not just that Donald Trump is dominating headlines once again; it’s that all the hits of 2017 and 2018 are being played again: legal experts cobbling together complex theories out of fragmentary information, exciting Twitter speculation about espionage and treason, a “this time we’ve got him” spirit unseen since the days of Bob Mueller devotional candles.The familiarity is useful; it means that we can look back and consider why they didn’t “get him” then, why Russiagate ended in a relative fizzle and sealed Republicans into a permanent suspicion of any investigation into Trumpian malfeasance.The Russia investigation was predicated — in the public eye and, at least in part, in its legal origins — on dire and dramatic scenarios: that Donald Trump had been cultivated as an agent of influence by Moscow, that there was a secret alliance between Trump’s inner circle and Russian intelligence, that the Trump campaign and the Russians had effectively collaborated in the hacking and dissemination of the Democratic National Committee’s emails. (And lordy, that maybe there was a pee tape.)None of these scenarios were proved by the investigation. As many Trump critics hastened to argue, the Mueller report did not exonerate the president or his campaign from wrongdoing. But the guilt established or suggested involved many things done in the clear light of day in an election that Trump won (encouraging Russian hackers and touting the information released), things attempted but never brought to fruition (some hapless, “Burn After Reading”-level attempts to connect with Russian dirt peddlers) and possible obstructions of justice in the course of the Mueller inquiry.Meanwhile, it also became clear that the investigation itself was guilty of process abuses, particularly in the way that the F.B.I. went about obtaining FISA warrants. And there was an obvious feedback loop between this investigative overreach and the overheated media coverage — the fact that law enforcement was unwisely using the infamous Steele dossier as a predicate encouraged journalists to amplify the dossier’s extreme scenarios, because after all, if the F.B.I. took them seriously, they must be very serious indeed.The endpoint of the investigation, then, reminded everyone that Trump is a self-interested intriguer surrounded by low-minded hacks. But it also made both the feds and the press look as if they had overreached in search of a Watergate ending. And for the partisan mind, the second part loomed inevitably larger, confirming Trump’s supporters in their belief that whatever sins their man might commit, the deep state was always out to get him.Now here we are again, and like the decisions of Mueller and James Comey before him, Merrick Garland’s choices turn on facts that the public can see only through a glass darkly. But I sincerely hope that the attorney general had the Russiagate experience in mind when he signed off on the search of Mar-a-Lago and that he considers how Mueller’s investigation finished as he considers his next move.The lesson to be drawn is emphatically not that Trump needs to be given permanent immunity because of a “don’t arrest ex-presidents” rule or out of fears that his supporters will take to the streets or launch lone-wolf attacks on the F.B.I.The lesson, rather, is that if the agents of the state come after Trump, and especially now when they come as representatives of an administration that might face him in the next election, they can’t afford to miss.Not only in the jury box but also in the court of public opinion, it needs to be clear, crystal clear, what separates any crimes he might be charged with from — for example — the perjury and obstruction of justice that didn’t send Bill Clinton to prison or the breach of intelligence protocols that Hillary Clinton wasn’t charged with. You don’t just need a plausible legal case that tests interesting questions about presidential declassification powers; you need an easy-to-explain slam-dunk.So if you have Trump taking design documents for nuclear weapons and shopping them to his pals in Saudi Arabia, congratulations — you got him; lock him up. If you have him taking boxes of notes from foreign leaders because he’s a childish egomaniac who thinks that he’s earned his White House souvenirs, well, then take the documents back, declare victory for the public interest and stop there. And if he took documents about the Russia investigation itself, of the sort that he wanted declassified during his presidency, well, tread carefully, lest you trap us all in an awful time loop where it’s forever 2017.It seems like a reasonable presumption that the documents in question are more serious than just some notes to Kim Jong-un but that the potential incrimination falls short of Trump literally selling secrets. But that’s a presumption, not a prediction. I’ve learned to be unsurprised by Trump’s folly and venality but also by his capacity to induce self-defeating blunders among people and institutions I would have considered relatively sensible before his ascent.So no predictions, just the warning: Don’t miss.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More

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    The Absurd Argument Against Making Trump Obey the Law

    This article has been updated to include new information about a man who attempted to breach an F.B.I. field office.It took many accidents, catastrophes, misjudgments and mistakes for Donald Trump to win the presidency in 2016. Two particularly important errors came from James Comey, then the head of the F.B.I., who was excessively worried about what Trump’s supporters would think of the resolution of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.First, in July 2016, Comey broke protocol to give a news conference in which he criticized Clinton even while announcing that she’d committed no crime. He reportedly did this because he wanted to protect the reputation of the F.B.I. from inevitable right-wing claims that the investigation had been shut down for political reasons.Then, on Oct. 28, just days before the election, Comey broke protocol again, telling Congress that the Clinton investigation had been reopened because of emails found on the laptop of the former congressman Anthony Weiner. The Justice Department generally discourages filing charges or taking “overt investigative steps” close to an election if they might influence the result. Comey disregarded this because, once again, he dreaded a right-wing freakout once news of the reopened investigation emerged.“The prospect of oversight hearings, led by restive Republicans investigating an F.B.I. ‘cover-up,’ made everyone uneasy,” The New Yorker reported. In Comey’s memoir, he admitted fearing that concealing the new stage of the investigation — which ended up yielding nothing — would make Clinton, who he assumed would win, seem “illegitimate.” (He didn’t, of course, feel similarly compelled to make public the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.)Comey’s attempts to pre-empt a conservative firestorm blew up in his face. He helped put Trump in the White House, where Trump did generational damage to the rule of law and led us to a place where prominent Republicans are calling for abolishing the F.B.I.This should be a lesson about the futility of shaping law enforcement decisions around the sensitivities of Trump’s base. Yet after the F.B.I. executed a search warrant at Trump’s beachfront estate this week, some intelligent people have questioned the wisdom of subjecting the former president to the normal operation of the law because of the effect it will have on his most febrile admirers.Andrew Yang, one of the founders of a new centrist third party, tweeted about the “millions of Americans who will see this as unjust persecution.” Damon Linker, usually one of the more sensible centrist thinkers, wrote, “Rather than healing the country’s civic wounds, the effort to punish Trump will only deepen them.”The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta described feeling “nauseous” watching coverage of the raid. “What we must acknowledge — even those of us who believe Trump has committed crimes, in some cases brazenly so, and deserves full prosecution under the law — is that bringing him to justice could have some awful consequences,” he wrote.In some sense, Alberta’s words are obviously true; Trumpists are already issuing death threats against the judge who signed off on the warrant, and a Shabbat service at his synagogue was reportedly canceled because of the security risk. On Thursday, an armed man tried to breach an F.B.I. field office in Ohio, and The New York Times reported that he appears to have attended a pro-Trump rally in Washington the night before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The former president relishes his ability to stir up a mob; it’s part of what makes him so dangerous.We already know, however, that the failure to bring Trump to justice — for his company’s alleged financial chicanery and his alleged sexual assault, for obstructing Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation and turning the presidency into a squalid influence-peddling operation, for trying to steal an election and encouraging an insurrection — has been disastrous.What has strengthened Trump has not been prosecution but impunity, an impunity that some of those who stormed the Capitol thought, erroneously, applied to them as well. Trump’s mystique is built on his defiance of rules that bind everyone else. He is reportedly motivated to run for president again in part because the office will protect him from prosecution. If we don’t want the presidency to license crime sprees, we should allow presidents to be indicted, not accept some dubious norm that ex-presidents shouldn’t be.We do not know the scope of the investigation that led a judge to authorize the search of Mar-a-Lago, though it reportedly involves classified documents that Trump failed to turn over to the government even after being subpoenaed. More could be revealed soon: Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that the Justice Department had filed a motion in court to unseal the search warrant.It should go without saying that Trump and his followers, who howled “Lock her up!” about Clinton, do not believe that it is wrong for the Justice Department to pursue a probe against a presidential contender over the improper handling of classified material. What they believe is that it is wrong to pursue a case against Trump, who bonds with his acolytes through a shared sense of aggrieved victimization.The question is how much deference the rest of us should give to this belief. No doubt, Trump’s most inflamed fans might act out in horrifying ways; many are heavily armed and speak lustily about civil war. To let this dictate the workings of justice is to accept an insurrectionists’ veto. The far right is constantly threatening violence if it doesn’t get its way. Does anyone truly believe that giving in to its blackmail will make it less aggressive?It was Trump himself who signed a law making the removal and retention of classified documents a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Those who think that it would be too socially disruptive to apply such a statute to him should specify which laws they believe the former president is and is not obliged to obey. And those in charge of enforcing our laws should remember that the caterwauling of the Trump camp is designed to intimidate them and such intimidation helped him become president in the first place.Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted because of politics, but he also shouldn’t be spared because of them. The only relevant question is whether he committed a crime, not what crimes his devotees might commit if he’s held to account.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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    Trump Claims He’s a Victim of Tactics He Once Deployed

    Donald J. Trump’s efforts to politicize the law enforcement system have now become his shield as he tries to deflect accusations of wrongdoing.WASHINGTON — Two days after the 2020 election that Donald J. Trump refused to admit he lost, his oldest son, Donald Trump Jr., made an urgent recommendation: “Fire Wray.”The younger Mr. Trump did not explain in the text he sent why it was necessary to oust Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director his father himself had appointed more than three years earlier. He did not have to. Everyone understood. Mr. Wray, in the view of the Trump family and its followers, was not personally loyal enough to the departing president.Throughout his four years in the White House, Mr. Trump tried to turn the nation’s law enforcement apparatus into an instrument of political power to carry out his wishes. Now as the F.B.I. under Mr. Wray has executed an unprecedented search warrant at the former president’s Florida home, Mr. Trump is accusing the nation’s justice system of being exactly what he tried to turn it into: a political weapon for a president, just not for him.There is, in fact, no evidence that President Biden has had any role in the investigation. Mr. Biden has not publicly demanded that the Justice Department lock up Mr. Trump the way Mr. Trump publicly demanded that the Justice Department lock up Mr. Biden and other Democrats. Nor has anyone knowledgeably contradicted the White House statement that it was not even informed about the search at Mar-a-Lago beforehand, much less involved in ordering it. But Mr. Trump has a long history of accusing adversaries of doing what he himself does or would do in the same situation.His efforts to politicize the law enforcement system have now become his shield to try to deflect accusations of wrongdoing. Just as he asserted on Monday that the F.B.I. search was political persecution, he made the same claim on Wednesday about the New York attorney general’s unrelated investigation of his business practices as he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying because his answers could incriminate him.“Now to flip the script and falsely claim that he’s the victim of the exact same tactics that he once deployed is just the rankest hypocrisy,” said Norman L. Eisen, who served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee during the first Trump impeachment. “But consistency, logic, evidence, truth — those are always the first to go by the board when a democracy comes under assault from within.”Mr. Trump’s Republican allies argue that he was not the one who undercut the apolitical tradition of the F.B.I. and law enforcement, or at least he was not the first to do so. Instead, they maintain, the system was corrupted by the bureau’s leadership and even members of the Obama administration when Mr. Trump and his campaign were investigated for possible collusion with Russia during the 2016 campaign, an inquiry that ended with no charges of conspiracy with Moscow.The former president’s camp has long pointed to text messages between a pair of F.B.I. officials that sharply criticized Mr. Trump during that campaign and to surveillance warrants obtained against an adviser to Mr. Trump that were later deemed unjustified. The Justice Department acknowledged the warrants were flawed, and an inspector general faulted the F.B.I. officials for their texts. But the inspector general found nothing to conclude that anyone had tried to harm Mr. Trump out of political bias.In a letter to Mr. Wray on Wednesday, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, alluded to the history of the F.B.I.’s previous investigation of Mr. Trump to cast doubt on the current inquiry that led to Monday’s search for classified documents that the former president may have improperly taken when he left office.Christopher A. Wray’s F.B.I. executed an unprecedented search warrant at the former president’s Florida home.Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times“The F.B.I.’s actions, less than three months from the upcoming elections, are doing more to erode public trust in our government institutions, the electoral process and the rule of law in the U.S. than the Russian Federation or any other foreign adversary,” Mr. Rubio said in the letter.The search was approved by a magistrate judge and high-level law enforcement officials required to meet a high level of proof of possible crimes. Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, himself a former appeals court judge who was appointed by Mr. Biden with bipartisan support and whose caution in pursuing the former president until now had generated criticism from liberals, has offered no public explanation so far.The degree to which Mr. Trump has succeeded in promoting his view of a politicized law enforcement system was evident in the hours after the F.B.I. search on Monday when many Republicans, including Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House minority leader, wasted little time assailing the bureau’s action as partisan without waiting to find out what it was based on or what it turned up.The Trump InvestigationsCard 1 of 7The Trump InvestigationsNumerous inquiries. More

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    Garland Becomes Trump’s Target After F.B.I.’s Mar-a-Lago Search

    The F.B.I. had scarcely decamped from Mar-a-Lago when former President Donald J. Trump’s allies, led by Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, began a bombardment of vitriol and threats against the man they see as a foe and foil: Attorney General Merrick B. Garland.Mr. Garland, a bookish former judge who during his unsuccessful Supreme Court nomination in 2016 told senators that he did not have “a political bone” in his body, responded, as he so often does, by not responding.The Justice Department would not acknowledge the execution of a search warrant at Mr. Trump’s home on Monday, nor would Mr. Garland’s aides confirm his involvement in the decision or even whether he knew about the search before it was conducted. They declined to comment on every fact brought to their attention. Mr. Garland’s schedule this week is devoid of any public events where he could be questioned by reporters.Like a captain trying to keep from drifting out of the eye and into the hurricane, Mr. Garland is hoping to navigate the sprawling and multifaceted investigation into the actions of Mr. Trump and his supporters after the 2020 election without compromising the integrity of the prosecution or wrecking his legacy.Toward that end, the attorney general is operating with a maximum of stealth and a minimum of public comment, a course similar to the one charted by Robert S. Mueller III, the former special counsel, during his two-year investigation of Mr. Trump’s connections to Russia.That tight-lipped approach may avoid the pitfalls of the comparatively more public-facing investigations into Mr. Trump and Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election by James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director at the time. But it comes with its own peril — ceding control of the public narrative to Mr. Trump and his allies, who are not constrained by law, or even fact, in fighting back.“Garland has said that he wants his investigation to be apolitical, but nothing he does will stop Trump from distorting the perception of the investigation, given the asymmetrical rules,” said Andrew Weissmann, who was one of Mr. Mueller’s top aides in the special counsel’s office.“Under Justice Department policy, we were not allowed to take on those criticisms,” Mr. Weissmann added. “Playing by the Justice Department rules sadly but necessarily leaves the playing field open to this abuse.”Mr. Mueller’s refusal to engage with his critics, or even to defend himself against obvious smears and lies, allowed Mr. Trump to fill the political void with reckless accusations of a witch hunt while the special counsel confined his public statements to dense legal jargon. Mr. Trump’s broadsides helped define the Russia investigation as a partisan attack, despite the fact that Mr. Mueller was a Republican.Some of the most senior Justice Department officials making the decisions now have deep connections to Mr. Mueller and view Mr. Comey’s willingness to openly discuss his 2016 investigations related to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Trump as a gross violation of the Justice Manual, the department’s procedural guidebook.The Mar-a-Lago search warrant was requested by the Justice Department’s national security division, whose head, Matthew G. Olsen, served under Mr. Mueller when he was the F.B.I. director. In 2019, Mr. Olsen expressed astonishment that the publicity-shy Mr. Mueller was even willing to appear at a news conference announcing his decision to lay out Mr. Trump’s conduct but not recommend that he be prosecuted or held accountable for interfering in the Russia investigation.But people close to Mr. Garland say that while his team respects Mr. Mueller, they have learned from his mistakes. Mr. Garland, despite his silence this week, has made a point of talking publicly about the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol on many occasions — even if it has only been to explain why he cannot talk publicly about the investigation.“I understand that this may not be the answer some are looking for,” he said during a speech marking the first anniversary of the Capitol attack. “But we will and we must speak through our work. Anything else jeopardizes the viability of our investigations and the civil liberties of our citizens.” More

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    As Jan. 6 Panel’s Evidence Piled Up, Conservative Media Doubled Down

    Many of Donald J. Trump’s allies in the media believe the reports about violence and criminal conduct committed by Trump supporters have been exaggerated.After the Jan. 6 committee’s final summer hearing last week, the talk on the sets of CNN and MSNBC turned to an intriguing if familiar possibility about what might result from the panel’s finding. The case for a criminal prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump, many pundits said, was not only justified but seemed more than likely given the evidence of his inaction as rioters sacked the Capitol.If that felt like déjà vu — more predictions of Mr. Trump’s looming downfall — the response to the hearings from the pro-Trump platforms felt like something new, reflecting the lengths to which his Praetorian Guard of friendly media have gone to rewrite the violent history of that day.Even as the committee’s vivid depiction of Mr. Trump’s failure to intervene led two influential outlets on the right, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, to denounce him over the weekend, many top conservative media personalities have continued to push a more sanitized narrative of Jan. 6, 2021. They have turned the Capitol Police into villains and alleged the existence of a government plot to criminalize political dissent.Mark Levin, the talk radio host, scoffed at the notion that Mr. Trump had tried to overturn the election or instigate an insurrection. If he had, Mr. Levin explained during an appearance on Fox News as other networks aired the hearings live, the former president would have taken more direct steps, such as ordering the arrest of Vice President Mike Pence or firing the attorney general.“You’d think with all the talk of criminality, they would show us,” Mr. Levin said, speaking on Fox News on Thursday night. “There’s nothing,” he added. “Absolutely zero evidence that Donald Trump was involved in an effort to violently overthrow our elections or our government. Literally nothing.”And to put a finer point on exactly what he meant, Mr. Levin read from a section of the 14th Amendment that says anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” is barred from holding federal office.That was why the media kept calling Jan. 6 “an insurrection,” Mr. Levin explained.(The writer of this article is an MSNBC contributor.)Part of the right’s message to Trump supporters is, in effect: You may have initially recoiled in horror at what you thought happened at the Capitol, but you were misled by the mainstream media. “What’s weird is that when I talk to these people, their disgust with the media over Jan. 6 is stronger now than it was a year ago,” said Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman and talk radio host who left the party because of its unwavering support for Mr. Trump. By the time the committee presented its evidence, Mr. Walsh added, “half the country didn’t give a damn or thought it was a hoax.”The dissonance can be perplexing. The same Fox News hosts who were imploring the president’s chief of staff to intercede with the president or risk “destroying his legacy,” as Laura Ingraham put it in a text to Mark Meadows on Jan. 6, now accuse the mainstream media of exaggerating the events at the Capitol.Key Revelations From the Jan. 6 HearingsCard 1 of 9Making a case against Trump. More

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    Pulitzer Board Rejects Trump Request to Toss Out Wins for Russia Coverage

    The board said it had found nothing to discredit the entries after reviewing the prize submissions from The New York Times and The Washington Post.The board of the Pulitzer Prizes, the most prestigious award in journalism, on Monday rejected an appeal by former President Donald J. Trump to rescind a prize given to The New York Times and The Washington Post for coverage of Russian interference in the 2016 election and Russian ties to Mr. Trump’s campaign and members of his administration.The board said in a statement that two independent reviews had found nothing to discredit the prize entries, for which the two news organizations shared the 2018 Pulitzer for national reporting.The reviews, part of the formal process that the Pulitzers use to examine complaints about winning entries, were conducted after the board heard from Mr. Trump and other complainants.“Both reviews were conducted by individuals with no connection to the institutions whose work was under examination, nor any connection to each other,” the board said. “The separate reviews converged in their conclusions: that no passages or headlines, contentions or assertions in any of the winning submissions were discredited by facts that emerged subsequent to the conferral of the prizes.”“The 2018 Pulitzer Prizes in national reporting stand,” the statement concluded.The winning entries included 20 articles from The Post and The Times on evidence of links between Russian interference and Mr. Trump’s campaign and administration, and efforts by Mr. Trump to influence investigations into those connections.Mr. Trump, who has pushed back against any implication that Russia helped him defeat Hillary Clinton, has repeatedly called for the prizes to be rescinded. In a letter in October, he said the coverage “was based on false reporting of a nonexistent link between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign.” On May 27, in a letter to Marjorie Miller, the administrator of the prizes, Mr. Trump threatened to sue for defamation if the awards were not rescinded.The Post and a spokeswoman for The Times declined to comment. A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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    La víctima cultural de la guerra de Putin en Ucrania

    La guerra en Ucrania es una catástrofe interminable. Las fuerzas rusas, concentradas en el este, siguen infligiendo un daño terrible en los soldados y civiles ucranianos. Una infinidad de vidas han sido perdidas y trastornadas. Una vez más, el mundo debe afrontar la posibilidad de una guerra nuclear y lidiar con unas crisis de refugiados y del costo del nivel de vida que están empeorando. Este no es el “fin de la historia” que habíamos esperado.Se está dando otra transformación, aunque menos violenta: luego de tres décadas de intercambio, interacción e involucramiento, la puerta entre Rusia y Estados Unidos se está cerrando. Casi todos los días otra compañía estadounidense —incluyendo la más simbólica de todas, McDonald’s, cuyos arcos dorados anunciaron una nueva era hace 30 años— sale de Rusia. Los diplomáticos han sido expulsados, los productos han sido retirados y las visitas personales pospuestas. En los consulados cerrados, nadie está emitiendo visas y, aunque lo hicieran, el espacio aéreo estadounidense ahora está prohibido a las naves rusas. La única interacción significativa parece ser la emisión de sanciones y contrasanciones.Para una rusaestadounidense como yo, cuya vida se ha forjado en los intersticios de las dos culturas, es un cambio de circunstancias doloroso y desconcertante. Hay que ser claros: las medidas para reducir la capacidad de agresión del Kremlin son necesarias en lo político y en lo moral. Pero el daño colateral es una ruptura de vínculos que está destinada a reavivar estereotipos perjudiciales y a cerrar el terreno para la polinización intercultural. Sobre todo, la actual ruptura marca el fin definitivo de un periodo en el que la integración de Rusia con Occidente, por más conflictiva que fuera, parecía posible y el antagonismo entre superpotencias ideológicas era cosa del pasado.Al menos eso fue lo que sentí un cálido día de marzo de 1989 en Krasnodar, la ciudad provincial al sur de Rusia, cerca del mar Negro, donde crecí. Mi escuela iba a recibir a un grupo de estudiantes de último año de una preparatoria en Nuevo Hampshire: estaba por cumplir 17 años y hasta ese momento Estados Unidos solo existía en mi mente como un concepto abstracto. Era el villano de un espectáculo para las fiestas de fin de año, el objeto de la misión de Nikita Khrushchev de “Alcanzar y sobrepasar a Estados Unidos” y el hogar del programa de La guerra de las galaxias, solo uno de los muchos diseños de los imperialistas para acabar con la Unión Soviética.Pero esos chicos y chicas que llegaron al patio de la escuela vistiendo sudaderas y pantalones de mezclilla no parecían imperialistas ni amenazantes en ningún sentido. Eran como nosotros, pero mejor vestidos: tímidos, con buenas intenciones y fascinados. Tan solo unas horas antes, durante nuestra clase de entrenamiento militar habíamos estado montando rifles kalashnikov para usarlos contra agentes enemigos. Y aquí estaban, de pie frente a nosotros. Nos quedamos mirándonos los unos a los otros. Entonces, alguien sonrió, otra persona saludó. En cuestión de minutos, la desconfianza entre nosotros había desaparecido. “Estoy leyendo Crimen y castigo para las vacaciones de primavera”, me dijo un tipo alto con un arete de plata. “¡Raskolnikov es genial!”.Tengo un cuaderno verde en el que he guardado los nombres de ciudades estadounidense, junto con una carta de amor, un clavel seco y un montón de fotografías en blanco y negro, recuerdos de la magia de 1989: el muro de Berlín desmantelado, la cortina de hierro cayendo, el temible “nosotros” y “ellos” esfumándose en el aire que finalmente era libre. Al cantar “Goodbye America, where I have never been” (Adiós, Estados Unidos, a donde nunca he ido), un himno popular, nos estábamos despidiendo de Estados Unidos como enemigo, de Estados Unidos como un mito y anticipábamos el descubrimiento del Estados Unidos real. Las palabras como “fronteras” e “ideología” ya no eran relevantes. Los dos países parecían estar unidos por un anhelo compartido de paz.Los años que siguieron generaron una buena voluntad inmensa entre nuestras naciones. Como rusa en Estados Unidos, conocí a innumerables personas que la construyeron: un médico californiano que ayudó a crear centros de cardiocirugía infantil en toda la Rusia postsoviética, un director de cine del área de la bahía de San Francisco que organizó el primer festival de cine judío en Moscú y un capitán de Seattle que creó empresas marítimas conjuntas con pescadores en el lejano oriente ruso. Los graduados universitarios rusos, por su parte, acudieron en masa a Estados Unidos, aportando su cerebro y talentos a todo tipo de actividades, desde películas de Hollywood hasta la secuenciación del ADN. Hubo muchos matrimonios. En los años noventa, una popular banda rusa de mujeres plasmó ese espíritu cuando le imploraron, con los acordes de la balalaika eléctrica, a un hipotético “American Boy” que se las llevara.Esa fue la ruta que yo tomé. Dado que al casarme entré en una familia de antiguos disidentes protegidos por Estados Unidos, yo también fui testimonio del flujo de personas e ideas. El dinero también fluyó. Por ejemplo, mi primer trabajo remunerado en Estados Unidos, en 1998, consistió en traducir para el segundo simposio anual sobre inversiones ruso-estadounidenses, organizado por la Universidad de Harvard; participaba un gran elenco de estrellas de la banca internacional que se disputaban la atención de los invitados rusos, entre ellos el magnate Boris Berezovsky y Yuri Luzhkov, entonces alcalde de Moscú.Sin embargo, en algún punto del camino, la buena voluntad se frenó. Después de haber expresado su entusiasmo por el primer presidente ruso postsoviético, Boris Yeltsin, los líderes estadounidenses consideraron que su sucesor forjado en el KGB, Vladimir Putin, no era tanto de su agrado. Putin dejó en claro que eso no le molestaba. “Hegemonía estadounidense”, una frase de mi infancia soviética, empezó a aparecer en los medios de comunicación rusos pro-Kremlin. En Occidente, los rusos ya no eran vistos como rehenes liberados de un régimen totalitario, villanos reformados de las películas de James Bond o emisarios de la gran cultura de Tolstói y Dostoievski, sino como personas que compraban lujosas propiedades en Manhattan y Miami pagando en efectivo. El encanto entre los países y sus ciudadanos se atenuó, pero los intereses compartidos y los vínculos sociales se mantuvieron.La anexión de Crimea en 2014 fue un punto de inflexión. Es cierto que Putin ya había dado rienda suelta a su agresividad en Georgia y, de forma devastadora, en Chechenia, pero fue su pretensión de reclamar el territorio ucraniano lo que dio a Occidente la llamada de atención. Las sanciones subsecuentes impactaron fuertemente en la economía rusa. También proporcionaron al Kremlin amplios medios para azuzar el sentimiento antiestadounidense. Culpar a Estados Unidos de los problemas del país era una narrativa familiar, casi nostálgica, para los rusos, más de la mitad de los cuales nacieron en la Unión Soviética. La simple cantinela “la expansión de la OTAN”, “la agresión occidental”, “el enemigo en la puerta”, se repetía, haciendo creer a los rusos que Estados Unidos pretendía la destrucción de su patria. La propaganda funcionó: en 2018, Estados Unidos volvió a ser considerado como el enemigo número 1 de Rusia, con Ucrania, su “títere”, en segundo lugar.En Estados Unidos, las cosas no estaban tan mal. Pero la llegada de Donald Trump a la escena política mundial complicó la ya tensa relación ruso-estadounidense. Trump se encariñó con el abiertamente autoritario Putin, reforzando el sentimiento antirruso que había ido en aumento desde la intromisión del Kremlin en las elecciones presidenciales estadounidenses de 2016 y que rara vez distinguía entre Putin y el país que gobernaba. Los lazos económicos y culturales empezaron a debilitarse a medida que se hacía más difícil obtener visas y financiación. Aun así, hubo intercambios de estudiantes, se proyectaron películas y se realizaron visitas familiares, aunque a intervalos más largos.Los misiles rusos que atacaron ciudades ucranianas el 24 de febrero extinguieron esa luz parpadeante. Estados Unidos ahora proporciona miles de millones de dólares en armas para usarse contra Rusia y el objetivo declarado de Rusia es poner fin a la dominación global “irrestricta” de Estados Unidos. Los dos países, que en su día fueron aliados en la guerra contra la Alemania nazi, están librando una guerra indirecta. Mientras veo videos de padres rusos incitando a sus hijos a destruir iPhones o leo sobre las amenazas contra una venerable panadería de Seattle conocida por sus productos horneados al estilo ruso, me invade, sobre todo, la tristeza. Nuestro sueño postotalitario de un futuro pacífico y amistoso ha terminado.Aparte de causar un horror físico, la guerra de Putin en Ucrania está borrando muchos activos intangibles, entre ellos la buena voluntad colectiva de Occidente hacia Rusia. En el futuro de mis hijos no veo ningún milagro cultural parecido al que yo viví en 1989. Es una pérdida para ambos países y la de Rusia será mayor si Putin sigue redoblando la carnicería y el aislamiento. Pero ese futuro no está tallado en piedra. Al fin y al cabo, los años de la perestroika, cuando la Unión Soviética se embarcó en reformas a gran escala en nombre de la apertura, demostraron que Rusia es capaz de cambiar.Por ahora, empero, cada explosión en Ucrania también ataca las bondades de la relación entre Estados Unidos y Rusia. En la tierra de Putin, “Goodbye America”, que antes era una canción irónica llena de esperanza, se ha convertido en una oscura profecía autocumplida.Anastasia Edel (@aedelwriter) es la autora de Russia: Putin’s Playground: Empire, Revolution, and the New Tsar. More